


this wide and scary universe

by thesilverwitch



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Space, Cyborgs, M/M, Near Death Experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 05:09:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3557213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverwitch/pseuds/thesilverwitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Good evening, ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary folk. This is your senior helmsman speaking. I would like to remind you that Earth's destruction by a solar flare is scheduled for one hour from now, at 10:34. You can watch it in one of our many viewing decks or through the hologram system in your room. Also, don't forget to try the Fireball Piña Colada at one of our bars and to take home some souvenirs to recall this momentous event. Thank you for traveling with us in the Intergalactic Impeccable. Have a safe trip.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Liirt, Abuntu and the Intergalactic Impeccable

**Author's Note:**

> A huge, teary-eyed, incredibly homosexual and admiring thank you to the person who drew all the art in this fic, who is also a dear friend and co-owner of my heart. [Fabi](http://mozl.tumblr.com/) is one of the most talented, skilled and wonderful people I know. She is an inspiration on so many levels. Her art is the best thing ever and it speaks for itself. The fact that it came from such an incredible person is just the cherry on top of the cake. Fabi, if you ever try to take over the world I'll support you, through thick and thin, and I'm so grateful that you picked my fic for this event, you have no idea.

There was a problem with the ship.

Located deep inside the engine room, near the very center next to the two tokamaks that power the whole ship, there was a control panel.

A deep shade of green with a light tinge of seafloor blue colored the screen in which letters, numbers, and images took form and grew alive. They could be blue, green or white; could be in Arial, SCHmi5 or Times Old Roman; could float in the air or lie flat on the screen. Most engineers preferred them in white, Arial and lying flat on the screen, although there were always one or two creative souls who liked to see their projects shift in the air in front of their eyes.

Right now, the letters were in red.

This was not a good sign.

There was a problem with the ship. It didn’t seem to be a big problem. It was not a ‘two more seconds in space and we’ll all blow up and become alien meat’ as far as the captain could tell. Really, it was a problem that would easily be fixed while they were docked, with a team of skilled engineers at hand to repair the radiation shields and get the whole show on the road again.

It was rather unfortunate, then, that they had left dock two weeks ago and were currently traveling through an area of space with no space stations or inhabited planets. The fact that they didn’t have a team of skilled engineers at hand didn’t help either.

There was a problem with the ship and no one to fix it.

* * *

Toni hated this type of bar.

The people were usually rude, the food so synthetic that even his taste buds had issues with it and the drinks over the top and ridiculous. It wasn’t like he wasn’t some kind of old-timer stuck in the past, always yelling at the clouds and desperate to go back to the golden days. It was that he had good taste and as someone with good taste, he had a deep sense of appreciation for a fine beer after a long day. 

The closest thing he could find to that on this bar’s menu was ‘Shrunk, neon BIER made from original, Earth recipe!’. The word bier floated in the air in a perfect example of badly employed holographic tools.

“Can I get a beer?” Toni asked. “Just a regular beer, without the shrunk neon part?”

The bartender gave him _the look_.

It was a judgmental look. The kind that expressed patronization, irritation, and frustration without the usage of words. Toni was used to being on the receiving end of _the look_ , but that didn’t make him any less bitter about it.

“It’s vacuumed beer. It already comes shrunk and neon. Most I can do for you is flash a quick ray of isotopes to defragment the neon part and get it to look like piss again,” the bartender said. He didn’t sound surly, but Toni figured he couldn’t even if he wanted to. Disadvantages of the job.

“No, it’s all right then. I’ll have the regular shrunk and neon,” he said. Under his breath, he murmured in his native tongue, “asshole.”

The bartender flipped around with super-human speed. “What’s that?” he asked. Toni noticed his pointy ears and the almost-unnoticeable gills under his dark skin. The bartender had Aldorian blood, which meant he could hear Toni's heartbeat without even straining himself, because that was just Toni's luck.

“Nothing,” Toni said, trying for his best innocent smile. The bartender stared at him for another couple of seconds, eventually turning around so he could get Toni's beer.

Not fluent in German then. Toni stored away that useless thought the same way he stored every thought and memory he had made in the past five years.

After he got his drink, Toni took it with him in search for a seat near one of the windows. The lights there were softer and the noise was not as deafening, so that people could hold conversations in peace.

They weren’t, of course, real windows. The Blooming Sea wasn’t advanced enough to show authentic comet showers and breath-taking constellations, but the quality of the virtual images was still outstanding. In any case, Toni didn’t mind it. He had seen enough of space to settle for a fake view of the Ubona solar system when he knew they were actually in the middle of nowhere.

He took a sip of his drink, grimacing as it trickled down his throat. Too sweet. There was too much Ixitone acid and not enough Ámid. 

Shitty space drinks, always living up to the reputation.

He put the drink on the glass table in front of him, and pulled down the sleeve on his left wrist until he could see the tiny control panel embedded into his skin. His heart rate was higher than it should be, but there was nothing he could do about it until he bought a new pacemaker, which he couldn’t afford.

Hormonal levels were a bit haywire as well, explaining why his skin was showing a few signs of acne near his temples. He had some localized pressure on the joint of his left knee and ankle. His hair was getting longer as well, but his blonde bangs were all natural, not a hint of chemistry or mechanics to them.

With a flick of his index finger, Toni reduced the power on his taste buds until they were practically shut down, caused a surge of FSH in his bloodstream and let his left leg go to sleep. He didn’t have anywhere to be.

He continued to sip on his drink, now tasteless and thus drinkable, while his eyes grazed the infinity of space, not locked anywhere specific. He should get his schedule out at some point while he was at the bar and figure out where was headed next. He always liked to do this type of thing when he was surrounded by other people. It comforted him; made him feel less alone. It was fake comfort, obviously, but comfort nonetheless.

Out the corner of his eye, he saw the people at the table next to his stare at him. 

Correction: stare at the metal covering his left ear.

Unsurprisingly, they weren’t even trying to hide it. People didn’t have a lot of respect for cyborgs, much less the people who traveled in cash-only space ships.

Toni turned his head and grinned. There would be a day when making people self-conscious and awkward wouldn’t be fun, but today wasn’t that day.

The people at the table next to him--a couple, with different shades of blue hair, eyes and skin--looked away the second they saw him and pretended they were having a conversation about the price of real estate in Real Oltin III. 

Toni turned back to his drink.

With all the time in the world, he turned his leg back on and glanced at his schedule. He’d take the job at Bk 55 next. The pay wasn’t very good, certainly not enough to buy the new pacemaker he had been dreaming of, but he had one or two contacts there and at the very least, they had decent beer.

He was about to turn off the screen beneath his wrist when a new notification popped up. Attached were five exclamation marks in bright red. The title simply said:

There is a problem with our ship. Assistance required. Payment generous.

Toni stared at the screen until his body forced him to blink. Then he stared some more.

Maybe he was getting the new pacemaker he wanted after all. 

 

 

Intergalactic Impeccable wasn’t so much a ship as it was a monument.

The words ‘massive’, ‘gigantic’ and ‘holy crap that thing is huge’ could be used to describe it, but even they wouldn’t do it justice. Toni had seen a lot of big ships in his lifetime, but this one was on another level.

Light hit its white exterior like oil on water, sliding off in a shimmering and ever-shifting gorgeous show of colors. It had fifty-four decks full of sports arenas, bars, its own forest, top of the line security system, a hospital, a school for all ages, and the list went on and on, seemingly without end.

It wasn’t so much of a ship as it was a city, capable of traveling the ineffable depths of space for over two years before it needed to dock and even then, docking was still optional. The ship’s engine room was the sort Toni had only ever heard of in less credited engineering e-magazines. It produced its own power, completely self-sufficient. Treated right, the ship could travel through space forever.

It had everything, including one massive problem in the engine room that nobody could fix.

Nobody except for him, apparently.

“Are you sure I’m the person you need right now?” Toni asked. The part of him that longed for the paycheck Intergalactic promised him for this job beat him up for making the question, but it was overshadowed by his pragmatic side.

Toni was concerned for the safety of the five thousand people currently on board. All of them probably with no clue that their means of travel and accommodation had a problem and that their captain had hired _him_ to fix it.

“You are Toni Kroos, independent contractor, graduate with the highest honors from the Royal Science Academy in Liirt and long-time expert in magnetic fields, advanced mechanical systems, and cybernetics?” asked the man currently guiding Toni through the Intergalactic, Sergio Ramos, vice-captain and retired officer from Universe Alliance.

Toni frowned. He wasn’t sure about him being a long-time expert on anything. He’d turned twenty-seven just last month.

Still, he wasn’t about to tell someone like Sergio Ramos that he was wrong.

“I am, yes, but if—”

“Perfect!” Ramos struck him on the back hard enough to make Toni fumble forward. “Then you’re our guy.”

“Okay,” Toni said, nodding to give off the impression that he knew what was happening.

Just smile and nod. That had always been his tactic since he was a kid. Just smile and nod until you figure what was going on, at which point you either run or fix the problem.

Inside the confinements of his own head, Toni wondered if he could make an escape on his own or if he’d have to find a way to call Felix and ask for help.

Vice-captain Ramos seemed to like Toni's reaction, if Toni were to take into indication the way he struck him--slapped, really-- on the back again.

“This is Iker’s office,” he said, pointing at the door in front of him. “Iker’s the captain,” he added afterwards, like a teacher talking to his kindergarten student.

Toni politely refrained from replying _I know_.

Instead, he stared at the door in front of him. It looked like any other door on this part of the ship, built to be efficient and practical. The only thing different about it were the two guards out front who looked like they could break Toni's neck, metal reinforcements and all, in two seconds.

“Pretty heavy security for a cruise ship,” Toni said, making Ramos shrug.

“Better to be safe than sorry,” he replied. Ramos smiled at the guards, who gave him a polite nod, and marched right into the Captain’s office without so much as a courteous knock first.

Toni was both horrified and impressed. He wasn’t used to traveling in ships with the magnitude of the Impeccable, but he knew enough about them to be aware that entering the Captain’s office without warning was gross misconduct.

“Iker,” Ramos greeted, opening his arms in a grand gesture as if he was greeting an old friend after many years apart.

In front of them there was a man sat behind a large transparent desk. Toni assumed he was Captain Casillas, another retired officer from Universe Alliance, from the way he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sergio,” he greeted in an exasperated tone.

“I found the solution to our problem,” Ramos said, grabbing Toni's arm and thrusting him forward. Toni felt like a lazy child’s science exhibit, being put on display for the critical eyes of jealous parents and annoying teachers.

Toni didn’t flinch when Casillas got up and came around the desk to shake his hand, although he did stare. It was impossible not to when he was in the presence of one of the greatest Universe Alliance’s officers of all time. Casillas had made Captain at twenty-nine, led his ship for six years through what the media described as ‘impossible’ missions and came away unscathed, with his ship and crew mostly intact.

Toni wasn’t a fan, per se. His thing was science and what went on behind the scenes, but, well, this was _Iker Casillas_. 

Casillas had been famous once. He had been the one kids everywhere looked up to. The stuff he had been through was taught in classrooms. He was used as an example of what to do when a mutation of rabies infects everyone in your crew but you, or how to win a battle of one versus two-hundred. He had been a star, a role model, until the day he and Ramos, also his vice-captain at the time, retired without warning.

People said he couldn’t handle the pressure after what happened in Abuntu, but Toni never believed those stories. An Alliance captain’s whole job is to deal with pressure, and Casillas had never backed down until then.

Nowadays, he served as the captain of a cruise ship and was in need of Toni's help. Funny how the universe worked.

“Toni Kroos?” Casillas asked him. His grip on Toni's hand was firm. He used twenty-seven percent of his strength, six more than most people did. He had bags beneath his eyes and his beard was at least two days old, but there wasn’t a single wrinkle in his clothes.

He was also going bald, but that might just be poor genetics.

Toni allowed himself to be seated as he replied. “Yes. I believe you need my help with something?”

Casillas nodded. “I’m Captain of Intergalactic Impeccable, Iker Casillas.” Once again, Toni refrained from saying _I know_. “And yes, we do need your help. Unfortunately, there is a problem with our ship. We would normally hire a team while we were docked to perform the repairs, but we’re currently limited in resources.”

“You mean we’re in the middle of nowhere and there was no one around but me,” Toni clarified.

Casillas looked as if Toni had just shoved a lemon in his mouth. “To put it in different terms, yes. There is no one else.”

Just as Casillas finished talking, another man entered his office.

Toni didn’t miss the way Casillas’ shoulders immediately straightened and his brows furrowed the smallest fraction. 

“Captain,” the man said. He wore a frown and an ostentatious blue shirt with enough medals on it to attract a horde of Magpies.

“Arbeloa,” Casillas nodded at him. “Mr. Kroos, this is our Chief of Engineering, Álvaro Arbeloa.”

He assessed Toni for 3.3 seconds, gave him a curt nod and turned back to Casillas.

“I didn’t know we were doing this now,” he said.

“Well, we don’t exactly have a lot of time left, do we?” Casillas replied. He pressed two of his fingers against his desk and a hologram blueprint of the ship appeared in the air. Ramos stood behind Casillas, with a hand on the back of his chair. 

“As I was saying, Mr. Kroos, there is a problem with our ship and no one to fix it.” Casillas glared down Arbeloa before the man could even consider replying. “We’ve seen your resumé. If there is anyone who can help us, we believe it’s you. We will, of course, pay you for your services and give you boarding until your next destination if you’re willing to accept our conditions.”

Toni leaned back on his seat. “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” he asked, making Casillas squint at him. It wasn’t like Toni to thrive under power trips, but he couldn’t deny that he enjoyed this. He hadn’t gotten to where he was today by not knowing when he was being played. “The Blooming Sea has already left, which means I’ll have to stay here until you dock, which I know is still some ways away or you would have hired someone else for the job. I can’t afford any of your rooms here, but you can’t kick me out either because there’s nowhere else for me to go. And I assume your conditions require that I don’t tell anyone about this problem of yours, which you can’t guarantee unless I accept your terms. So it’s work or…?” Toni trailed off.

“We wouldn’t make you pay for a room,” Sergio huffed as if disgusted by the idea. “And there are other ships around that can give you boarding if you want to leave.”

Toni shrugged. He had a feeling both Ramos and Casillas meant well, but promises, he’d learned, were never worth much.

“Okay, let’s say I believe you,” Toni said, giving them the benefit of the doubt. “What are your conditions?”

Toni had read and reread the email they sent him, but the virtual bleep didn’t contain much. He needed more than that to accept their offer.

Casillas pulled out a pad from his jacket and handed it to him. “Discretion, like you said. You can read the contract and then hand it over to Arbeloa if you decide to sign it. He can take you to the engine room, Mr. Kroos.”

“It’s doctor, actually,” Toni corrected absent-mindedly as he skimmed the contract. It was eighty-three pages long, not including annexed files on insurance and liability. Toni looked up when he felt everyone staring at him. “I graduated from the Liirtian Science Academy with a doctorate, so you should be calling me Doctor Kroos, not Mister.”

More staring. Toni feared he had pushed too far until he saw Casillas grin. “Dr. Kroos, we hope you decide to help us.”

Toni nodded. He hoped he could help them, too.

He was led to a meeting room adjoined to Casillas’ office so he could read the contract in peace. It was different from the contracts he was used to signing. A lot more complex and a lot harsher as well. He was prohibited from doing pretty much everything that wasn’t fixing their ship and keeping silent about it.

Toni was tempted not to sign it. This wasn’t how he worked. He didn’t do secrecy and lying, but walking away didn’t feel right either. It had always been his nature to help others where he could. His mother used to say he had a human body, but the heart of a Mer, and no one could take that away from him.

After his accident, Toni made a habit of staying true to himself in fear of forgetting who he was. It was a habit he did not wish to break.

He signed the contract with a little flourish and allowed himself to be led to the engine room. It was located at the bottom of the ship, away from the luxury and the eyes of the passengers.

Arbeloa didn’t say anything during the first ten minutes of their walk. Toni couldn’t be sure if Arbeloa was angry at him, angry at their situation or just a reserved person. He decided to test it. “So, you’re the chief of engineering?”

“Yes,” Arbeloa replied. Toni waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t.

Another minute passed.

“You know, I wanted to be a chief of engineering as well when I graduated. But then I had my accident and I guess being half android, half human means I don’t look respectable enough for the position. Although, technically speaking, I’m only forty-six percent android.”

“Is that so?” Arbeloa asked. 

“Yeah, which is why I mainly do freelance jobs. Doesn’t pay nearly as much and I end up fixing people’s air conditioning more often than not, but a job is a job.”

“So they’re sending an air conditioning repairman to do my job,” Arbeloa muttered, low enough that Toni wouldn’t have been able to catch it if his hearing wasn’t augmented.

Toni added another option to his table of hypotheses. Arbeloa was a dick and probably an incompetent one at that, if they had him around and still needed Toni's help.

The rest of their walk was spent in silence.

When they got the engine room, Arbeloa only took one step inside before he said, “As charmed as I am to be a tour guide, I have work to do, Dr. Kroos.”

It was difficult for Toni to refrain from rolling his eyes. “Just show me where you need me.”

“Center of the room with the two tokamaks. If you need help ask one of the ensigns,” he said. Toni nodded and that was all Arbeloa needed to see to abandon him.

Toni was so asking for a bonus if he finished this job.

He tried to make his way to the center of the room on his own. As with everything else in this ship, the engineering deck was the size of a small city. In less than five minutes, Toni had slammed his real knee into metal framework, gotten lost, and thrown enough curse words into the air to make even the toughest of soldiers blush.

He was trying to get blueprints of the stupid room onto his pad when someone sidled up to him. “Hello? Do I need to call security?” they asked.

“Unless they can show me where the center of this freaking room is, no thank you,” Toni groaned as he stabbed his pad with his fingers. The stupid thing was slow beyond belief and they used an eyesore for software.

“All right,” said the man staring at him in a slow, distrustful tone. He was humanoid, short with dark hair. Bright pink dusted his temples and he had visible double-lids on his eyes. “Mind telling me who you are?”

Toni glanced at his pad, then sighed and shut it off. “No, sorry. My name is Toni Kroos. I’ve been hired to look at this ship’s engines. Apparently there’s a problem with them.”

“Kroos? Are you the writer of that article that came out in _Spacetastic_ three years ago about achieving nuclear fusion in a contained environment through black matter?”

Toni took a step back. He had no idea people even read _Spacetastic_. It was a cheap magazine that only published extravagant and wildly impractical ideas. Toni wrote for them for a laugh and something to do when he couldn’t sleep. “Yes?”

The man grinned and reached out his hand for Toni to shake. “I’ve read your work. It’s awesome. I don’t know why they’re not teaching it in academies everywhere yet.”

“I have one or two ideas why,” Toni said with a pained smile.

“I’m Isco, by the way. Just an ensign. Not even close to your level yet. You said you wanted to go center of the room right? I heard there was a problem with the engines, but I didn’t know they were hiring outside help.”

“I guess they’re trying to limit the amount of people who know about it,” Toni said, frowning as he spoke. There was an engineering problem and they hadn’t asked all the engineers around if they could fix it? Interesting tactic. Slightly questionable as well.

Isco took him past walls after walls of machinery that Toni would have loved to explore given the opportunity. Cruise ship or not, the Intergalactic was worthy of his admiration on a purely scientific and aesthetic level. This was the kind of ship they should be sending on diplomatic planets not yet part of the Alliance. Instead it was wasted, day after day, on pointless journeys through already charted space.

In the center of the room were the tokamaks, which were at least five meters tall and ten meters wide each. Toni didn’t even know they made them this big. He would have whistled if he could, but after his accident his jaw needed so much reconstruction that it made whistling impossible.

Still, figuratively, Toni whistled.

“Right?” Isco asked, grinning at him. “I’ve been working here for six months now. Still not tired of seeing them. This is what made me go into engineering.”

“Tokamak engines decided your career path?” Toni asked, lifting a brow in silent judgment.

“Super cool, awesome stuff like this decided my career path and I know you feel the same. Anybody who writes about venturing into black holes in search of black matter has to be as much of a fanboy as me,” Isco replied, not the least bit flustered by Toni’s judgmental brow.

Toni laughed, feeling comfortable for the first time since he’d stepped foot on this ship. “I can’t argue with that.”

He walked towards the control panel between the two engines, a large framework that could be used by three people at the same time. Before he even began his work, Toni went into the settings and chose his preferred appearance. White letters in Arial floating in the air. 

“Thinking about it, it makes sense that they hired you,” Isco mused. “Probably don’t wanna run into even the slightest chance of trouble when we get to the Earth.”

“We’re heading towards the Earth? Isn’t it about to blow up or something?” Toni asked, one ear on the conversation and another on the stats in front of him. He’d heard on _Universe News!_ that the Earth was in danger of being destroyed. Something about a solar flare and the Earth’s core being unstable. 

“Well, yeah, obviously.”

Toni paused.

“Obviously?” he asked, turning around on the tip of his toes.

“Obviously, otherwise there would be no point in us going there.”

Toni could hear Isco speaking and he knew he recognized the language he was speaking to be Earth standard, but still the words fell flat on his ears. “Come again?”

“We’re going there so we can see the Earth be destroyed by the solar flare.” Isco cut through the air with one of his hands as he looked up and quoted the next words. “‘A once in existence opportunity! See the end of the world from the comfort of the Intergalactic Impeccable, the best ship in the universe. Package deals available for groups and large families!’

Toni stared. Isco sighed. “There were advertisements everywhere in the galaxy.”

“I travel a lot outside the Milky Way?” said Toni, who wasn’t even sure why he was explaining himself. It wasn’t as if it mattered what an engineering ensign thought of him. 

“Then you might have missed it. Anyway, that’s where we’re headed and I should probably be leaving you to do your work and so I can do mine. Shout if you need anything, I’ll be around,” Isco made two guns with his fingers and pretend to shoot at Toni, winking before he turned around and left.

Toni stared at Isco’s departing figure until he came to terms with the fact that he was, once again, out of his depth and with no clue to what was happening. Then he waited around some more until he was okay with this as well.

He went back to his work, which consisted of looking over everything in search for the ominous error that had brought him to the Intergalactic. All the paperwork he’d received so far had been purposely vague about it and Arbeloa was of no help either. With the new information he’d gotten from Isco, Toni could now assume the problem had something to do with the engines not working at full capacity. They were most likely running on a tight schedule and Casillas feared they wouldn’t make it to the Earth in time to see it being destroyed live and in color, all for the measly cost of all your internal organs sold on the black market.

A once in existence opportunity indeed.

Toni went through the data quickly, browsing through the surface stats first before delving deeper. Their speed was good and they would make it to the Earth with a day to spare according to the calendar. Engines were running at full capacity. Everything seemed to be fine except the radiation shields, which were running on low capacity and beneath the recommended minimum.

Was this their huge problem? It wasn’t a big deal. They just needed to stabilize the engines and reroute some of their power to the radiation shields. In the meantime, in order to keep the ship in equilibrium, they’d have to increase the levels on the plasma shields, which were—

Not working.

Toni stared at the control panel. He checked the data again, but nothing changed. Radiation shields at low capacity. Plasma shields at zero capacity. To fix them they would have to dock, which they couldn’t do because they were nowhere, and they had to fix them or they were all dead the second they got hit by the solar flare.

With a swipe of his finger, Toni turned the monitor off and took a step towards the door. Then he took another one and one more after that, until finally, he ran.

* * *

There was a problem with the ship, but only some of the crew members knew of it.

In the main dining hall, the one with the lavish chandeliers and golden wallpaper, set to imitate a hotel room from the nineteenth century, there was a clock.

It wasn’t just any clock.

For one, it was set to twenty-four hours. On a ship like the Intergalactic Impeccable, where most of the passengers were part human, it was common to find clocks set to twenty-four hours. Nevertheless, the whole thing was a bit of a novelty. Everyone knew clocks set to forty-four clarks were more accurate and that different races viewed time in different ways. 

This clock was even more of a novelty because of its quartz mechanism, which had grown outdated centuries ago. It displayed time with two large, metal hands that went around the white surface. Its surface was made of a synthetic that imitated real ivory, and part of its metal frame had been taken from a real Earth clock, or so the ship owners claimed.

The passengers found the whole thing rather charming, in that sort of disinterested, boring way one would find in useless trinkets and gifts from people they were never close with charming.

As time flowed, second by second, the clock struck midnight. No one noticed it doing so. The crew members didn’t care and the passengers weren’t paying attention to the ornament on the wall, with its arms now joined at the very top. They were talking to their spouses and families instead. They were laughing heartily and eating a delicious meal. They were enjoying themselves.

Time kept flowing by. The clock struck midnight and one minute. In less than four days, they would all see the destruction of the earth.

There was a problem with the ship, but none of the passengers knew of it. 

 

 

“You lied to me,” Toni shouted.

“I didn’t—” Casillas tried to say, but Toni wasn’t having any of it.

“You said there was a problem with the ship. That back there is not a problem, it’s a major fucking breakdown,” Toni pointed behind him, where the doors separating Casillas’ office from the rest of the ship had already closed. “The second that solar wave gets close to us, and it will because we’re directly fucking headed towards it, it’s gonna react with the engines and blow us all up.”

Casillas shook his head. “You can fix it. I’ve seen your resumé, your projects, you—”

“I am not a miracle worker! I can’t do it on my own and your engineering department is useless if they let things get this far,” Toni said. He slammed both his hands on Casillas’ desk and glared at him while Casillas tapped a finger on his desk and stroked his beard. 

Vice-Captain Ramos strolled in through a side door, but neither of them paid him any mind.

“What do you need?” Casillas asked.

Toni gasped. “What do I need? I need for us to turn around immediately so that we don’t die. I need for us not to head towards a massive solar flare. That’s what I need.”

Casillas shook his head at him again. “I can’t do that, so I’m going to ask again. Dr. Kroos, what do you need?” Casillas’ whole demeanor was pure steel. His voice didn’t waver and he didn’t break eye contact with Toni, not even to blink. Toni stared back until the moment he felt himself snap and crumble.

“I need an expert on thermonuclear fusion power. I’m good with the mechanics, but if I’m meant to calibrate those shields with the ship in motion then I’ll need someone inside the engines while I make sure they stay balanced on minimum power. Even then, though, it’s still too dangerous.”

“Sergio,” Casillas called, turning to his second in command. Behind him, Ramos was already searching for someone in his pad.

“We’ve got one,” he said. “James Rodríguez. He’s with the KRR guest party.”

“Get him,” Casillas said.

Sergio nodded and left the room. Toni watched them interact with a mix of fear and frustration. “Did you not hear me? I said it’s too dangerous anyway. You have to turn this ship around. You can’t just keep roping more people into this.”

“We can’t turn around,” Casillas said, leaning back in his chair.

“Why not? Of course you can. You’re the captain of this ship. You can do whatever the hell you want.”

“We can’t,” Casillas replied like a broken robot, repeating the same lines over and over until its circuits melted.

Toni took a step back. “What is this? You used to be an Universe Alliance captain. You used to go on missions, travel through uncharted parts of the universe and help people. You used to do some actual good. Now what? You’re worried about making a bunch of rich people angry instead of saving all our lives?” Toni shook his head. “I used to look up to you. Me and thousands of kids everywhere, and now you’re _this_.”

With a flick of his wrist, Casillas locked the door. “Sit,” he ordered.

“I don’t want to sit.”

“Dr. Kroos, I asked you to take a seat. Please. What I’m about to tell you next cannot leave this room, do you understand?”

“I’ve already signed your contract swearing to secrecy,” Toni said, throwing himself on the seat.

Casillas examined him. “You must know that up until four months ago, my second in command and I served as Captain and Co-Captain of the Madrid, working under the Universe Alliance.” Iker gave him a look, waiting for a reply. Toni nodded. “And you must have also heard of the Ramoskis’ murders?”

Toni stared. What did this have to do with anything? “It was all over the news,” he said.

Casillas nodded and with a sigh he continued. “You heard that the entire Ramoski Royal Family of Abuntu was murdered. This information is false.”

Toni tried to remember what he’d learned about them in school and in the news throughout the years.

The Ramoski Royal Family of Abuntu was one the oldest and most powerful families in the Milky Way. Rulers of Abuntu, their home planet was rich in Perilio, a rare mineral essential in deep space exploration, scarce everywhere else. The Ramoskis were rich beyond belief and they were the ones who proposed the creation of an alliance between planets in the Milky Way two centuries ago.

Their power was almost unlimited, but due to their genetic coding, they were prone to infertility, which meant the entire family consisted of about ten people. Said ten people were murdered three months ago in what people everywhere were calling the biggest crime in history.

Toni wasn’t sure about it being the biggest, but it was definitely big. Without its royal family, Abuntu was being subjected to public unrest and outside pressure. The planet had fallen into disarray and it wouldn’t be long before someone stepped up and tried to take control of the Perilio mines. The consequences of that happening were, to date, unmeasurable.

“They let someone live?”

“The two youngest siblings escaped and they’re currently on this ship, on their way to one of the few planets where we can fully guarantee their safety. You must understand, if we turn back, there is nowhere in this quadrant where those children will be safe. They will be murdered, and us too, I imagine, for trying to keep them safe. Not to mention the general chaos and destruction that will result of Abuntu falling into a civil war, which should happen in about three months with the way things are headed.”

So they were risking it all for two kids. Two innocent kids. That and inner galactic peace.

Toni sighed.

“I can’t guarantee this ship’s safety. Even if that other guy you found helps me, this might all go to hell anyway.”

“If you really can’t do it, I promise we’ll turn the ship around and find another way,” Casillas said.

Toni took a deep breath.

So this was what his life had turned into. Felix was never going to believe him when he told him.

“And another thing,” he said before leaving Casillas’ office.

“Yes?” Casillas asked, although he looked like he wanted nothing more than to thrown Toni out.

“The guy you found to help me. You have to tell him everything. He’ll realize something fishy is up if he’s as smart as I need him to be, and I’m not going to lie to him if we’re meant to work together.”

Casillas nodded. “Deal.”

* * *

There was a problem with the ship.

It was a terrible problem that the Captain had largely downplayed for the sake of two innocent lives and galaxy peace.

If he wanted to live, and consequently save the lives of five thousand people and, indirectly, the rest of the galaxy, Toni would have to fix said problem.

The whole ordeal was terrifying, but at the same time, he had to admit, he had never felt more alive.


	2. Bk 55, Rrrrrrrkukpht and Merian

In the first five minutes of meeting Dr. Rodríguez, who immediately asked to be treated by his first name, Toni learned pretty much everything about the man.

James Rodríguez was an easy-going person. He smiled a lot, could become friends with someone instantaneously and was known to be great at listening and giving practical advice. 

He was dressed in all white, in the kind of outfit Toni, who only ever dressed in various shades of gray, wouldn’t be caught dead wearing. His pants were pretty loose and his jacket was a size too big, made of leather leather, with sleeves made of fabric. Somehow he was able to pull it off, his own natural brightness fitting the flashy outfit.

This was not to say, however, that he was always up for spending every waking minute surrounded by other people. Especially not when said other people were pretentious, rude, and, worst of all, assumed he was too. Just because he was too polite to tell people to fuck off when they commented on how Aldorians were inherently dumb, as if being from a race that viewed time vertically instead of horizontally made anyone dumb, didn’t mean he agreed with them.

James wasn’t a passive aggressive person, but he sure was learning how to become one.

When Vice-Captain Sergio Ramos approached James with a job offer, he took it immediately.

“When Sergio told me I wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone from my party, I had to try not to look too happy or he’d have known something was up. Not that it matters whether or not he knows, but it’d suck if Cristiano heard about it.”

“And Cristiano is...?” Toni asked. He wasn’t sure why he was asking. He wasn’t interested in the life of James Rodríguez, engineer extraordinaire working for one of the biggest companies in the galaxy. Rodríguez was usually the type of person that got on Toni’s nerves. Too cheerful. Too honest. Too _bright_.

“My boss. I like him. I like everyone I work with, actually, but for this trip they invited a lot of investors and clients. And I get it. We need them to run a successful company, but they’re just so judgmental, you know?” James smiled at Toni as if they were old friends. Toni tried to smile back.

“I have an idea, yes.”

James nodded, seemingly pleased with Toni’s answer. “So I agreed to Sergio’s proposal immediately, and only learned about all the details later,” James’ smile dimmed. “Sounds kind of crazy, doesn’t it?”

Toni turned to look at James. They were on their way towards the engine room. Breakfast had been brought to Toni’s room early in the morning, alongside a notification of where to go and where he could find James.

“Are you scared?” Toni asked.

“Not scared,” James said, shaking his head. “Overwhelmed, maybe. Thousands of lives are in danger here. More, if you count lives that will be lost if Abuntu falls into a civil war. In a way, it’s funny,” he said without laughing. “I always dreamed of doing something like this when I was a kid. You know, saving people and doing some real good. But now that I’m actually doing it, I’m no longer sure if this is what I really want.”

Toni felt the same way and realizing he was not alone was like taking a breath of fresh air from a new CyberLung. He, too, was sure of himself, and yet overwhelmed and confused.

“We can do it. We can save... everyone,” Toni said, trying to convince both of them.

James nodded, smiling at him. When they reached the engine room, there was no one around to guide them, so once again Toni had to find his way through the maze of tubes and metal.

“Back there,” James said, breaking the silence as they ducked beneath a large piece of equipment. “You were totally gonna say ‘save the Earth’, weren’t you?”

Toni laughed and couldn’t help but hide his face behind his hands for a second. “I watched a lot of old action shows as a kid, all right? Lots of Star Trek and the like. It was always the Earth back then, not Colony 23.9 or Rrrrrrrkukpht, which I still maintain is not pronounced ‘rok’ like everyone says.”

“It’s fine. Old movies are kind of charming. I get it,” James held up his hands in a defensive position, making Toni laugh again.

They got to work as soon as they reached the tokamaks, all pleasantries and small chat pushed aside in a moment’s notice. To fix the plasma shields, one of them would have to be on constant standby to make sure the engines didn’t go into overdrive or shut down. At the same time, he would also monitoring the radiation shields, which they’d first have to raise to minimum safety values.

To say they were walking a tight line didn’t even begin to describe what they were doing. They were walking a nonexistent line. A microscopical ray of sunlight. An invisible thread. They were, essentially, walking down to the underworld, waving their finger in front of Hades’ face and then trying to make their escape on a raft made of paper.

“Not to kill the mood, but I felt much better about this when we weren’t actually doing it,” James said. Toni bit his bottom lip. Could he get Felix to come rescue them after ordering Iker to turn the ship around? It sounded like something he couldn’t do, but he was still willing to try.

“We need to do this. We’re like Alliance engineers now, working for the greater good.”

James trailed a hand across the control panel, bringing it back to life. “Did you ever dream of working for Alliance as a kid?”

“Didn’t we all?” Toni shrugged. He took a step to the right so that they could each have their own space. In the back of his head, alarm sounds started to ring. James Rodríguez was, out of everyone that Toni could have gotten stuck with, pretty decent. He was smart, if his resumé was anything to go by, and he wasn’t stuck-up and pompous like most of the people Toni met.

He was still someone new, though, and that alone was enough to make Toni wary.

“It was the dream job. Especially working with someone like Iker. I couldn't believe it when I heard he was retiring. I’m glad to hear there’s something else to it,” James said. Of course he already referred to Casillas, and earlier Ramos, by their first names. If anyone was the type to become friends with Alliance’s best officers in two minutes, it was him.

Meanwhile, Toni was hanging on the same boat with a history of nothing but screaming and staring matches. 

Maybe he wasn’t cut out for working with other people and even if the accident hadn’t happened, he’d still be where where he was today.

“We need to get the radiation shields up. Can’t do anything with them like this. We should also run a compositor check on the engines, make sure everything’s still in working condition. What are we thinking: computer accident, human accident, or tampering?” James asked. He had been staring at the data for less than a minute.

Toni, who had been reading the data floating in front of James, had to do a double-take. “What?”

“What are we thinking?” James asked, pointing at the floating number. “Computer accident, human accident, or tampering? Something must have happened to get the numbers this low and with a ship like this.” James shrugged. “I’m just saying, computer accident seems unlikely.”

“I don’t know,” Toni admitted. He’d spent the night thinking about this as well, but he didn’t think he’d find a chance or reason to bring it up. “I talked to the Chief of Engineering yesterday.”

“Yeah? What did he say?”

“Nothing. He seemed pretty angry. That or he was just an asshole. Also talked to an Ensign, who had no idea how far their little ‘problem’ actually went, although he did seem pretty smart,” Toni said, making air quotes like he’d seen people do in old movies.

James made a little humming sound in agreement. “How far do we wanna go?” he asked, pointing at the bars in front of him.

“Just two point three, I’d say? Anything higher might create a reaction we can’t control,” Toni replied. 

They got to work silently, James working with the left engine while Toni dealt with the right. This part wasn’t too tricky, they would just have to be microscopically precise and move at the same exact pace and everything would be fine.

“You know what I’m thinking?” James asked, halfway through raising the levels on the radiation shields.

Toni wiped a few drops of sweat from his forehead with his shirt sleeve, the material absorbing the moisture and making it disappear immediately. “No,” Toni murmured, not really paying attention. He liked precision work like this, liked the challenge of it, but he could do without the stress. Especially when his heart was like this. Toni could swear he was on the edge of a heart attack.

“I’m thinking the conspiracy might run deeper than we know,” James whispered, even though they were completely alone in the middle of a gigantic room.

“Is now really the time to talk about this?” Toni’s human hand was beginning to cramp, and his index finger was trembling despite his best efforts to keep it steady. Damn cheap machinery and damn him for being too poor to afford new parts.

“Right, right. Drinks later? It’s not like we’re allowed to hang out with anyone else,” James said and Toni—

Toni desperately wanted to say ‘no’ to this man, who was a genius and golden boy. Who’d probably never faced any hardships in his life and who was forcing his way into Toni’s carefully guarded and isolated life, only to leave as abruptly as he’d come in. He wanted to say ‘no’, but he also wanted to get this job done as soon as possible and he needed James to shut up for that to happen. Not to mention, he could definitely go for a drink.

“Sure. Let’s just finish this for now.”

“Yes, yes. Sorry,” James said, smiling apologetically. He had a big smile. The kind that could hook people in. Toni looked away.

It was impossible for them to finish the repairs in a single day, but if they could just get the radiation shields at a stable level today, they would be done by the end of tomorrow.

They didn’t have much time in either case. With each passing second they got closer and closer to the Earth’s destruction was predicted to happen in fifty hours.

To put it in another way, they either did this now or they were out of time and would have to tell Casillas to turn the ship around. James seemed to understand this as well, as he was quiet for the rest of the day. They skipped lunch and only moved when they had to switch stations.

“Left is at one point seven,” James said.

“Hold it, I’m still behind on six,” Toni replied. He opened another screen in the air. “There’s a chance of contamination in the upper decks. The shields seem to be weaker there.”

“Seriously?” James asked, craning his neck to look at Toni’s side. “Can we fix it from here?”

“We should be able to. I think the problem is in the coding, not the mechanics.”

“If it’s the mechanics we’re totally screwed.”

Toni grinned. “Afraid to get out there and do some manual work?”

James kicked him in the leg and Toni laughed. “We don’t have the time,” he said.

“I know, I know,” Toni said, fingers blurring through the air. “Don’t worry, I can do this.”

“I trust you, Dr. Kroos,” James replied. Toni chanced a blink-and-you-missed-it glance at James, but didn’t say anything.

By the time the shields were finally at their solid, steady, two point three, Toni’s whole body ached and his heartbeat was all over the place.

“So this wasn’t bad,” James said.

“This was the easy part,” Toni replied, making James shrug.

“We make a good team,” he said. Toni had to agree with that. Despite how little they had in common, they understood each other well and had fallen into pace with each other easily. “About that drink,” James began.

Toni nodded at him. The movement, as simple as it was, made his head spin and his ribs pull tighter across his chest. Toni dropped his hands onto the control panel.

“I think I’m going to pass out.”

“Hey, come on, don’t tell me you never pulled a whole day of non-stop work while you were in the Liirtian Science Academy. This is nothing compared to that,” James said. He was smiling, or at least he looked like he was smiling. Toni couldn’t tell, his vision getting blurrier by the second.

“No, I mean it. I—“ Toni’s left knee gave up on him. “I need to go to my room. My heart—“ he swallowed. “My heart isn’t—“

Of all the times for his pacemaker to give up on him, this had to be on top of the list for ‘Most Goddamn Inconvenient’.

Toni tried to breathe as deeply as his lungs allowed him to, but there didn’t seem to be enough oxygen in the air. He briefly registered James pulling him up and calling for help. Another pair of hands showed up at some point. A voice. Familiar. Maybe Isco from yesterday. His legs cooperated as they made him walk. An elevator. More walking. His legs decided they were done cooperating.

He collapsed on a bedspread, white, as pure as light. His heartbeat was slowing down. Soon, it’d reach a dormant state, where it’d work on the lowest setting to keep Toni alive for as long as possible.

A weight in his chest and then, like a kiss from the cosmos and a birth of stars beneath his ribs, he was back.

“Oh, fuck,” Toni cursed. His chest was on fire and his body shook as tremors ran down his spine and then back up again.

“You with us again?” someone asked. Toni blinked a couple of times until James’ face took a solid form in front of him.

“Yes,” he said, gasping for air. “Yes,” he repeated, reassuring himself as he reassured James. He took a quick glance around. They weren’t in his room. There were clothes spread on the end of the bed, so not the infirmary either. 

“Are you okay? Your heart started beeping while we were dragging you to the infirmary, so I brought you back to my room, which was closer, and literally shocked you back to life.”

“I’m good,” Toni glanced at the monitor on his left wrist. “I mean, my heart is beating five times faster than a normal human heart would, but it seems to be slowing down.”

James nodded. Time continued to trickle by, minute after minute in which all Toni did was breathe. He could feel a weight on his chest, and when he looked down he saw what looked like a dismantled hair blower. All right then. Not what he expected, but definitely clever.

“I wasn’t gonna ask about the,” James pointed to his own left ear, “but it’s related, right?”

Toni didn’t like talking about the accident or how much it had affected him, but he’d just passed out in front of the man and had been brought back to life with a hair styling tool. Toni figured he owned him an explanation or two.

“I was in an accident right after I graduated from the RSA in Liirt. The entire left side of my body was pretty much destroyed. My parents were there, too. They—” Toni coughed, “they died. But my brother made it out with just a couple of scratches. He was the one who insisted I was treated even though the odds were all against me me and who helped reconstruct my body. Spent all our life savings and in the end, I’m still this.”

Toni pointed at himself. At his left ear, which he’d never got around to covering with synthetic skin. At his knee, that needed to be decompressed once a day or it would snap like a twig. At his heart, which was on its last days.

“It’s not so bad though,” Toni added before the pity party could start. “I’m still alive and hopefully, if we do this right, I’ll live long enough to upgrade some of my parts and not pass out on people out of nowhere. Also, I’m so sorry about that.”

James waved him off. “Speaking of it, want me to take you to the infirmary?” 

Toni’s reply came far too quick. “No,” he groaned, making James laugh.

“I totally knew you were going to say that. You seem like the type to run away from doctors the second you see them.”

“That’s a totally normal reaction,” Toni scoffed, which made James laugh again.

“Come on, let me at least walk you to your room then. We’ll have a raincheck on those drinks.”

Toni wanted to refuse James’ help—he could walk on his own just fine, thank you—but the truth was his legs weren’t all that steady, and James’ company wasn’t terrible. 

“Thank you,” he said, allowing James to guide him with a hand on his back.

They used the passengers halls to get to Toni’s room. Unlike the parts of the ship reserved for the crew, which were a clinical grey and white, all copies of each other, the passenger halls were full of color. Inside the walls, like floating drops of paint in water, mixes of colors burst and moved, running after each other. They were meant to represent communications being made all throughout the ship. Energy signals, text messages and intergalactic calls; all flowing through the walls as if those were the veins of the ship and they were the blood.

When they reached Toni’s room, James left him with the promise of picking him up the next day and of informing Sergio and Iker of their progress. Toni thanked him again.

 

 

Toni’s room was a small thing. Most of the decorations in the Intergalactic were up for the passenger to choose, but Toni wasn’t the kind to spend hours analyzing each detail. He’d gone for the standard white walls and fake wooden floor. One of the walls was made entirely out of a transparent synthetic, so that he could see the immensity of space from the confinements of his room. Toni watched the stars blur by before he moved to the food processor. He got noodles for dinner, showered and then turned off most of his mechanical bits, falling into a deep, restoring slumber.

Tomorrow would be even more stressful than today. He couldn’t risk collapsing again.

He woke up the next day to the sounds of birds chirping and a Liirt harp playing the Old Constellation. Toni couldn’t decide if the computer knowing that was his favorite song was creepy or impressive, so he settled for drinking a cup of watery coffee and waiting for James.

“How are you feeling?” was the first thing James asked when he saw him.

Toni thought about it for a second. “Like I’m still alive. You?”

“Didn’t sleep much. My thoughts run from me sometimes, and I spent all night thinking about today. Overall, I’m good though. I’ve drunk like, four cups of coffee with energy powders mixed in, so I’m also on a caffeine high.”

Toni frowned. He’d worked with a couple of addicts—caffeine, alcohol, natural and synthetic drugs—and they were never pleasant people to be around. “I need you to be focused while we work.”

James grinned. “Don’t worry, I’m part Mer,” he said. Toni sighed in relief. Mer people had, for human standards, extremely fast metabolisms. Things like caffeine only affected them for about ten minutes before they sweated it out.

“But yesterday we went hours without eating,” Toni said, frowning even more.

“Mer mineral bars,” James took generic looking candy bars from his pocket. “They can keep me going for a while. You can have one later if you’d like, although they usually make humans feel a bit sick.”

Toni smiled. “I’m good,” he said. He’d checked and re-checked the conditions of his mechanical parts yesterday, and other than his heartbeat, which was still running too fast, he was fine. As long as he remembered to grab something from the synthetic food processors around lunch time and didn’t stress too much, he could handle whatever today threw at him.

Of course, that was much easier said than done.

With the radiation shields back up, it was time for them to work on the plasma shields, which were a hundred times more volatile. Fun times were ahead.

“So I’ll monitor the engines and the radiation shields,” Toni said.

“While I literally go inside two huge tokamaks and get the plasma shields up and running. Right. Easy stuff,” James clenched his fists and then blew some air onto his hands to warm them up.

“If it makes it any better, I’d switch places with you if doing so wouldn’t result in catastrophic failure.”

James turned to look at him and grimaced. “If that’s your idea of how to make a person feel better, I advise you to spend a little more time researching cheering up techniques.”

“Well then, how about I buy you those drinks if you do this right and save all of our lives?” Toni scratched the back of his neck, purposely avoiding James eyes. This was the first time he had asked someone out in five years for something other than a quick fuck, and even though this wasn’t exactly a marriage proposal, it was still enough to put a twist in his stomach.

“Drinks with you and saving five thousand people.” James grinned. “Now that’s a good cheering up offer.”

“May your coding be solid and your fingers fast,” Toni said as James stepped inside the tokamak. It was a silly saying, an old mantra students in the RSA used to wish other people luck before a big exam.

James turned around and flashed Toni a huge, blinding smile. “We used to say ‘May the engineering gods be with you’ at AIST. We were kind of old-fashioned.”

“Well, that too,” Toni said. James winked at him.

“I’d say the same, but I know you don’t need any engineering gods.”

Toni didn’t blush. His heart didn’t work like that.

Before he got to work, Toni shrugged off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. While James, with all the time and precision in the universe, raised the levels of the plasma shields, Toni would have to be on standby to make sure the tokamaks didn’t flip out and the radiation shields didn’t go down.

He couldn’t believe they were actually doing this in these conditions. This was the kind of work a team of specialized engineers should perform while the ship was docked. 

It wasn’t that Toni didn’t have faith in his and James’ skills because he did. Toni had always thought of himself as good at his job, great even, and James was as good as him, but this would push both of them to the limit.

And still he was doing it, because he had to and he refused to let a challenge get the best of him. Because he’d survived against the odds once. Surely he could do it again?

They were a little less than a day away from the earth, which meant they had a day to do their jobs and do them right.

What followed were thirteen hours of agonizing work. Time seemed to move in jumps and stretches around them. Sometimes a minute would take an eternity to pass, and other times Toni would glance at the clock and two hours had gone by in the blink of an eye.

James didn’t take a break once, only pausing every once in a while to shove a nutrient bar in his mouth. Toni followed his example, getting a quick meal from the food synthesizer five hours in and then completely forgetting he was even supposed to eat.

Still, despite Toni’s left leg cramping a little after the seven hour mark and having to turn off internal airflow for safety, increasing the temperature in the room by about ten degrees celsius, everything was going alright.

Until, of course, it wasn’t.

They were doing incredibly well and they were so close to finishing. _So_ close. The radiation shields were solid the whole thirteen hours and Toni kept the balance between everything else as James raised the plasma shields, moving from one tokamak to another. They were actually fixing this goddamn ship, and then suddenly—

“The radiation levels are rising. The shields aren’t strong enough to hold them,” Toni said in a panicked hush while he read the data on his screen. 

“What?” James asked, wiping his head to glance at Toni before he looked away. “No, come on. Outer or inner shields?”

“Inner,” Toni replied. A problem with the inner shields was a problem in the engines, which meant it was a problem standing two meters away from him.

“James, you need to stop right now or we’re both going to die. We need to turn the engines off immediately.” Toni glanced up, where James was still working inside the tokamak and showed no signs of stopping. “James!” he shouted.

“Just two more minutes. Don’t turn the engines off or we’ll lose all our progress. I swear I’ve got it,” James shouted back, making Toni curse him to hell and back.

Levels on the radiation shields were dropping and fast. If they dropped below zero point seven, the risk of an engine meltdown, and consequently what they called in the science world a big, nasty explosion capable of destroying the entire engineering deck, would reach ninety-nine percent. They had to stop right _now_ if they wanted to live.

“James, get out of there. It’s not working!” Toni shouted. Through the transparent case around the tokamaks, he could watch James’ hand move frantically across one of the control panels inside, trying to get the plasma shields working properly again.

“One minute!” James shouted back.

Toni glanced from James to his own control panel, which was ordering him in bright red letters to do something. His options were limited. He could physically drag James out of the tokamak, but that would mean not being in control of the shields and increase the chances of a meltdown, which were already high enough as they were. Or he could continue to do his work and give James a few extra seconds to save their lives.

“I hate this ship,” Toni muttered as he got back to work.

He was so getting a bonus when this whole thing was over. A huge bonus. And some kind of Universe Alliance medal. And possibly something else if he could figure it out in time. Maybe his own ship? He certainly deserved his own ship.

With a flick of his index finger, Toni turned off the alarms in his station. He didn’t need the screen yelling at him to know they were in trouble. He could hear a computer voice in the distance, ordering the immediate evacuation of everyone in the engineering deck.

“Thirty seconds!” Toni shouted. He couldn’t even believe he was doing this. They should have turned the ship around the second Toni realized the scale of the problem. They had been foolish thinking they could do this on their own. Foolish and plain stupid.

“I’ve got it,” James said, but the numbers on Toni’s screen told another story. They were about to drop below zero point seven. Alarms were going off everywhere. In front of him, the tokamaks began to glow brighter as they started to react with the plasma shields.

“James!” Toni let go of the controls and ran straight towards the gigantic piece of technology about to explode.

He lived as a fool. He may as well die as one too.

The second Toni opened the tokamak door, James spun around and moved towards him. They collided, head to head and shoulder to shoulder, sending them spiraling down to the ground. 

Toni watched as the tokamak above them kept growing brighter and brighter until suddenly it stopped, freezing in the space of half a second, and returned to its normal dull blue color.

“Oh my god,” James said as he sat up, turning towards Toni. “Oh my god. I thought I was going to die. I really thought I was going to die. _Fuck_.”

Toni stared at him with wide eyes and a gaping mouth. He could hear James speaking, but Toni was frozen in shock, unable to digest what had just happened.

Everything had been going fine and then it hadn’t and they almost died. They almost died.

The computer voice asking everyone to leave quieted down. The alarms turned off. Inside the tokamak, the colors on the screen shifted from overwhelming red to quiet white.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt? Did you get burnt?” Toni asked, crawling closer to James.

“I’m good,” James said. His chest moved in sagging motions that cut off midway and left him struggling for breath. Toni rested a hand above his heart and held him there until he could feel James’ chest slow down.

Then Toni punched him.

“Hey, what the hell?” James gasped in shock. Toni clenched his jaw as he refrained from punching him again.

“You were this close to killing yourself. To killing both of us.” Toni held up his index finger and thumb a centimeter apart. “ _This_ close.”

James looked away for a second before he looked at Toni again. “Would it make the situation any better if I told you I had everything under control?”

Toni gave in to his wishes and slapped the back of James’ head as hard as he could with his right hand.

“Go call Casillas. Tell him his stupid ship is fixed and that we can continue on our path to see the great spectacle that is the destruction of humanity’s origins.” Toni laid down on the cold metal floor and hid his face in his hands. “Then go buy us a whole bottle of Abuntuan vodka because I need to get drunk in a royal, expensive fashion.”

Through the gaps between his fingers, Toni watched James heave himself up and call Casillas. It was a short talk, with James giving the captain a safe for viewers of all ages version of what happened.

“Tell him we should get a bonus,” Toni said without expecting James to do so.

James chuckled and mentioned they’d discuss job terms later. After he hung up, he walked back to Toni and pulled him to his feet.

“You want to get drunk in a ‘royal, expensive fashion’?” he asked with a small grin. He looked at Toni curiously, as if he was trying to study him.

Staring at James like this, so close, with their hearts still beating off rhythm and their breaths too heavy, Toni realized there were better things they could do with their time.

“No,” he said, still shaking from the adrenaline and feeling foolish enough to continue on the path of reckless actions. “Let’s go to your room instead.”

James stared at him, eyebrows raised in surprise and mouth slightly ajar. Toni thought he was going to do something idiotic like ask if Toni was sure, but in the end he just nodded and grabbed Toni’s hand. The walk to his room was spent in silence, but as soon as they entered James’ accomodation, which was far more luxurious than Toni’s, James turned to him.

“Do you still want that drink? My employers are paying for all of my trip, so we can order the most expensive thing on the menu if you’d like.”

“James,” Toni said to get his attention, pulling him against his chest. “Do you think I would have come here if I still wanted that drink?”

James’ hands slipped down to Toni’s waist. “The window is real, so we can watch the Earth blow up from here if you’d like,” he said, pointing with his head to the window behind him.

Toni did the math in his head. They were still about twelve hours away from the Earth blowing up, which meant spending the next twelve hours in James’ room with him.

Truth be told, Toni couldn’t care less about watching the Earth blow up. He found the whole thing emotionally detached to the point where it was nauseating. The human race had abandoned the Earth more than two centuries ago. They took all the resources they could carry with them and left the planet—infertile, unlivable, dead—to rot behind.

Now they were coming back to watch a gigantic solar flare go through its core and destroy it.

Toni could see no joy in the experience. Then again, he wasn’t like most people. Life had always treated him differently, more so in the last five years. It was no surprise that he’d end up aboard a ship full of people nothing like him.

“All right,” he said. James didn’t strike him as the type to enjoy watching the Earth blow up either, but that wasn’t enough to make Toni leave in any case.

James kissed him first. His lips were cold, his body nature a few degrees lower than Toni’s. Toni rubbed his hands across his arms, trying to warm up his skin and stopping when he could no longer tell the difference between them. James was stronger than him. His arms around Toni’s waist were enough to lock them in place. Toni heard himself moan into James’ mouth.

They fell onto the bed on top of one another, with Toni beneath James. Their clothes were discarded mostly by James, who pushed and pulled until they were both naked and breathing heavily.

Being with James wasn’t like Toni was used to. It wasn’t rushed or forced, but it wasn’t mellow either. Toni’s emotions were going through a blender. He was crossed between shock and relief from still being alive, and this unique warmth that came from being with James.

Despite this, Toni still tried to keep things strictly physical. It was always easier when feelings weren’t at play. But every time he tried to move away, even for just a second, James would pull him back in with a promising smile, a careful touch, or a breathtaking kiss.

At some point, Toni stopped holding back and let himself _feel_ for once. Eventually, that became easier as well.

He fucked James first with James on his stomach and Toni leaning against him. Their hands were clasped together around the sheets. Toni left bite marks on James’ shoulders, pushing James to the edge with a hand around his dick and soft prayers in his ears.

After that they switched positions so James could ride Toni, and that was even better. Seeing James come undone on top of him, mouth open as he moaned, sweat trailing down his chest and Toni’s hands marking his hips, was enough to make Toni come not too long after.

When James finally fucked him, Toni was boneless. He didn’t try to hide his face or his groans of pleasure, didn’t feel awkward about spreading his legs open wide and letting James restrain his wrists. By then eight hours had passed and Toni could barely remember his name, much less the previous day’s events.

“What do you feel like eating?” James asked him. He was sat cross legged next to Toni, the menu displayed on his pad. 

“Anything is good,” he said. One of his hands found a dimple on James’ back while James ordered their food. He left it there, drawing equations on the soft skin until James got up to get their food from the synthesizer.

They sat on the bed, with their backs against the headboard, food spread in front of their legs. Toni put on a pair of James’ boxers and let James feed him things from his plate without a second thought.

Through the window in front of them they could see the earth and the sun, standing miles apart and yet seemingly so close.

“Are you excited about it?” Toni asked as he nibbled on his Eguturian chicken wings.

A couple of seconds passed before James murmured. “Not really. This is like the death of an old relative I never met. It doesn’t affect me personally because I know all that’s left on the Earth are rocks and abandoned buildings, but it’s still sad, you know? All our history is about to disappear. Also makes you think of what our lives would be like if we had taken care of the Earth instead of leaving the second we got the technology to do so.”

Toni nodded. “I agree, although I don’t think you need something physical to recall the history and origin of something,” he said, thinking of himself, his half human, half electronical body.

Part of his brain had been destroyed during his accident, but they’d rebuilt it. He’d kept most of his memories, with only a few gaps here and there, like what their old house looked like or the sound of his grandmother’s voice, and that had been enough for him.

“True enough,” James said, glancing at Toni and flashing him a smile. 

Toni closed his eyes. They still had some time before the big event. “Let’s take a nap,” he said.

James put the plates on the floor next to them.

“I’m gonna use your shoulder as a pillow, just so you know.”

“Okay,” Toni said, moving so that they could fit comfortably. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen after all this was over. Heading toward Bk 55 for another job didn’t seem right, but neither did trailing after James like a lovesick dog. 

He would decide later, when his head was clearer and there wasn’t a warm body keeping him company.

* * *

“Good evening, ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary folk. This is your senior helmsman speaking. I would like to remind you that Earth's destruction by a solar flare is scheduled for one hour from now, at 10:34. You can watch it in one of our many viewing decks or through the hologram system in your room. Also, don't forget to try the Fireball Piña Colada at one of our bars and to take home some souvenirs to recall this momentous event. Thank you for traveling with us in the Intergalactic Impeccable. Have a safe trip.”

* * *

Toni woke up to the noise of a small beep that quickly grew louder and lasted longer, until it became an intermittent shrill noise that echoed inside his ears.

“Oh god, what is that?” he asked, groaning as he turned over and tried to hide his head beneath his pillow.

“My pad. Had it connected to the ship’s system to make communications faster,” James groaned.

“Turn it off,” Toni begged, pushing James towards the edge of the bed with his feet.

He heard James curse and get up, but unfortunately no changes were made in the ‘stop the horrible noise’ area. Toni pushed himself up on his elbows to look over the hologram clock on the wall. Forty-five minutes until planet Earth blew up, which were forty-five minutes he should be using for sleep.

“Are we dying?” Toni asked. He dropped his head on the pillow again and waited for James to laugh at his joke.

“Toni,” James said in a hollow tone.

Toni sat up. “What—“

“Power levels on the shields are dropping,” James said.

“They can’t be. We fixed them.”

“Something happened,” James pushed a pad onto Toni’s hands. “They’re dying. Both of them.”

They both froze with James’ hands on top of Toni’s and the pad caught between. There was a drop in the atmosphere, a change in the air. Toni struggled to breathe in. He saw James’ tremble, a shake running through his naked chest.

“Let’s go,” Toni said. They got dressed quickly and then — then they ran.

* * *

As space keeps stretching, there will come a time when infinity will come and infinity will take humanity. A time when the space inside people’s bones will hold galaxies and their veins will bleed hydrogen. Where their arms and legs will reach the deepest corners of the universe and their hearts will create life, from the microbe to the dinosaur to the half human, half alien living in a colony two quadrants away from where they were born.

There will come a time when every cell in people’s bodies is a solar system and the birth of comets takes place in the tip of their lashes, from which they fall gracefully onto a sea of stars. A time when people realize they are not meaningless creatures, crawling day after day on a rocky surface, but life, death, and the universe itself.

A time when people look at the stars and see themselves reflected in them in all their imposing, incredible, and miracle presence. A time of jumping on asteroids, having picnics in Saturn’s belt and roasting marshmallows on the Sun’s surface.

A time when humans reach for the impossible and grab it with all their might.

A time of fragility where the weight of life becomes almost too hard to bear.

Toni and James ran to save the lives of five thousand people.

This was that time.

* * *

When they got to the engine deck, the place was nearly deserted. Only the skeleton crew had remained behind, looking oblivious to the fact that all of their lives were in danger.

“Why are the alarms not working?” James asked.

Toni shook his head. “There’s barely anyone here. I bet they didn’t even notice something was wrong,” he said.

They ran for the stations where they’d been working the past few days and immediately set to work.

Toni’s fingers twitched when he realized the scale of their problem. It was a small twitch. Barely noticeable. His ring finger pressed down as his index and thumb flew up. Color disappeared from his already naturally pale face. His breath got stuck in his lungs. He blinked. Hard.

They were thirty minutes away from being hit by a massive solar flare and all of their shields were down and there wasn’t enough time.

There was only one thing they could do.

Toni gripped the metal surface of the control panel until his knuckles turned white and there was a small dent beneath his prosthetic hand. He tried to breathe out, but found that he couldn’t. He glanced at James, who had yet to reach the same conclusion as Toni’s.

He had just enough time to do at least one thing right.

“James, you need to go find the chief of engineering. The shields wouldn’t have gone down without a reason, I’m sure he had something to do with it,” Toni said.

He wasn’t lying. The shields, theoretically, shouldn’t have gone down without a reason. Toni was reaching, however, by claiming that reason was Arbeloa, but he needed to get James out of there.

“Does it matter? We need to fix this now.”

“If he fucked up, he might be able to tell us how and we’ll know how to fix it then. It will speed things up. Go. I’ll handle things down here and get some of the other engineers to help.”

James looked like he was caught between leaving and staying. Toni mentally crossed his fingers.

“Call if you need anything. I have my communicator with me,” he said after a long moment of silence. Toni breathed out.

“I’ve got it,” he said.

After James’ left, Toni waited another fifteen minutes before he opened the tokamaks’ doors and accessed the emergency evacuation file. Fifteen minutes in which he tried to find another way to fix the ship. Fifteen minutes of hope. Fifteen minutes before he accepted his fate.

Fifteen minutes and then he ordered everyone out of the engine deck and nearby rooms and turned off all communications to the engine deck. He didn’t need anyone calling in to ask what he was doing.

It didn’t take longer than five minutes of Toni staring at the wall, a million thoughts and none at all buzzing through his head, before someone managed to turn communications back on.

“Toni, open the door. I know what you’re doing,” a voice—James’ voice—said over the intercom.

Toni laughed. So he had been found out. He had a feeling it would happen. They were both too smart for their own good.

“I take it you’re seeing what I’m seeing right now,” Toni said. He was looking at the panel in front of him, which showed the plasma and radiation shields were failing and wouldn’t be able to withstand a small proton hit, much less a full-on solar flare.

“Yes, which is why you need to let me in so we can fix it,” James tried to order. All of the kindness and cheerfulness Toni had grown accustomed to was missing from his voice, replaced by anger and fear.

“I can’t do that. The risk of an explosion is too high.”

“Then you can’t be there either!” James shouted.

Toni shrugged, even though he knew James couldn’t see him, even though shrugging was the last thing he wanted to do. “Somebody needs to be here.”

“This is some Star Trek bullshit right here,” James spit out, sounding like he was close to tears.

“So you did watch the show,” Toni exhaled, his breath fogging the control panel’s main screen. He dropped to his knees rested his forehead against the panel. 

“Don’t do it, we can find another way, please. You’re brilliant. _We’re_ brilliant. Just open the door and let me help, just like we did yesterday,” begged James.

“There’s no other way. Yesterday was different. The solar flare is going to hit us in,” Toni glanced up, “five minutes and the only way for the ship to withstand the hit is if someone stays here and keeps the plasma shields up and running from here.”

“ If you stay there, explosion or not, you’re going to _die_. The engines will fry you alive.” James screamed. A window popped up on the left side of the control panel’s screen. James’ face came into view. The window moved down until their faces were at eye level. James had tears in his eyes. He looked livid. “You can’t die.”

“I might survive,” Toni whispered. 

“No, you won’t. You know you won’t.”

Toni laughed, breathless and close to tears. “I’ll be the exception, for once.”

“Toni—”

“You should go. There’s no guarantee you’ll be safe so close to the room,” Toni said as he got up to his feet. He moved away from the control panel without looking back at James’ face.

“I’m not going anywhere, you asshole.”

Even though James could no longer see him, Toni still shook his head.

Two minutes.

“It’s too late,” he said. He heard James say yell something else at him, but the words didn’t register in Toni’s ears.

He stepped inside the tokamak quietly, leaning against the glass door for a second before he picked himself up. He was doing exactly what James had done yesterday, only this time there would be no one to pull him out. No one to risk his life saving him, which was fine. He was technically only worth fifty-six percent of a human life.

Toni inhaled.

Thirty seconds.

He was glad he got to spend his last day alive with James. The two of them had clicked against all odds. Being with him had been fun and easy and just _good,_ in a way nothing in Toni’s life ever was. 

Inside the tokamak, the air got warmer and denser, making it harder to breathe.

Toni exhaled.

Twenty seconds.

Felix was going to be so pissed when he heard the news. Toni would have recorded some last words for him if he thought they would help. A few comforting words wouldn’t do anything in the face of Felix’s righteous anger. Toni hoped the ship would survive, just so Felix could meet Casillas and Ramos. His brother would tear both of them a new one if he were ever to meet them. It would be amazing.

Fifteen seconds.

Most of the functions on the control panel inside the tokamak were no longer working. Toni could manually control the shields and little else.

Toni kept them running.

Ten seconds.

Toni opened the communication channel from inside the tokamak. There was too much interference for him to be able to speak to anyone outside the engineering deck, but his words would be recorded for later.

“James, I’m sorry.”

He wasn’t sorry about saving the ship and all their lives, but he was sorry about doing it like this.

Five seconds.

“I’ll miss you.”

Two.

“Goodbye.”

* * *

 

There was no longer a problem with a ship.

 

* * *

“You’re awake. Good. Don’t try to move or sit up. You’re in bed rest for the next week and then because I’m mad at you, you’re gonna stay here for another week until the doctors can swear on their lives that you’re as good as new,” the voice to his right said. Toni blinked until James’ face came into focus. Damn, they had to stop meeting like this.

“I— what?” Toni asked, his voice coming out as a low croak. James handed him a small tablet and Toni put it on the top of his tongue. In a few seconds, his mouth was rehydrated again.

“You died. You completely, one hundred percent, genuinely died. All of your electronic components fried when the solar flare hit us, which we both knew would happen. And you would have stayed _dead_ ,” James uttered out the word with so much venom that Toni physically recoiled, “had I not literally dragged you to the infirmary and hooked you up to seven different machines that brought you back and kept you alive long enough to replace your parts. Isco was there to help me, by the way, and he’s also really angry at you. He’ll come here when you’re feeling better to yell at you.”

Toni stared at James, needing a moment to process all he was saying. He looked at his left arm, which looked as it had always looked. When he tried to move it though, just a centimeter to the left, it felt different. Lighter. Faster to process his order.

On his right, James squeezed his hand. Toni hadn’t even noticed they were holding hands.

“You saved me,” Toni said, staring in awe at James, who just shook his head.

“No, I was on the other side of the door after running a goose chase for Arbeloa, who was totally involved, proving my theory of the conspiracy running deeper than we knew, but that’s for later. I didn’t do shit, Toni. I could only wait as the doctors saved your life and then did what I could to make sure this would never happen again. I was terrified.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well. I’m sure I’ll forgive you soon enough, but for now I am mad. I am so mad I can’t decide whether I want to punch or kiss you, which is why I’m gonna sit here, hold your hand and not let you out of my sight for a second,” James stroked the back of Toni’s hands with his, the affection of his actions taking the edge out of his words. Toni tried to hide his smile. 

“I can deal with that,” he said. James nodded.

“Also, later we’re gonna talk about our feelings, because I really like you and it’s important that you know that. And don’t even try to argue with me on any of this! Neither of us are going anywhere and that’s final.”

“Okay,” Toni said.

“Okay? That’s all you have to say?” James asked, giving him a wary look.

“If you want me to stay then I’ll stay.”

“Could have done that a little earlier, couldn’t you?” James scoffed, but Toni didn’t take it to heart. He couldn’t, not with the way James was smiling at him. Not when his right hand was enveloped in warmth. Not when he was still alive. “We’re headed towards my grandparents home planet, Merian, right now. I want the people there to examine you. Your brother should also be there. We contacted him after we were sure you’d make it.”

Toni cringed. That was not going to be a fun chat. “How long was I out for?”

“Eight days. We didn’t have a clue if you were going to make it at first. The kind of work the doctors did. They say most human bodies can’t handle it, but I guess you’re good at exceptions. Also, Iker’s coming in later to give you a job offer. He was really impressed with what you did. I think he and Sergio are a little in love with you now. Oh and you should act surprised.”

“I should act surprised? Then why did you tell— Oh,” Toni said, the realization hitting him. “Because you’re mad at me. Right,” he said, snuggling in his comforter. He sighed and smiled. “Right.”

 

 


End file.
